And No Birds Sang (18 page)

It was dawn before we found the Regiment again. It had taken up defence positions on some hills to the north of the road a mile from where we had been ambushed. Nobody had seen anything of Reid. Much later I was to learn that he had flopped into the ditch some yards behind me, at a point where there was no protecting cut bank. Unwilling to take the risk of making a break for it when we did, he had lain doggo until first light when the Germans spotted and captured him. But at the time I was sure he had been killed in this, his first hour of battle, and for weeks afterwards I was haunted by the guilty conviction that real responsibility for his death was mine—that I had fatally failed him as a man and as a friend. The relief I felt when word finally came through that he was a prisoner, and alive, was indescribable.

Tweedsmuir was making plans for a daylight attack on the German positions when a tired and muddy brigade liaison officer arrived on foot—no vehicles could reach our position—bearing new orders. We were now told to undertake an even longer and more ambitious flank march through yet bigger mountains to capture the town of Celenza, nineteen miles away as the crow might fly.

Whoever conceived that operation must have been totally out of touch with reality. We had been skirmishing with the Germans in rain and fog for two days and nights, wet and cold most of the time, existing on the skimpy rations each of us carried in his pack, getting low on ammo, without sleep, and without radio communications with our own forces. If Kennedy had been in command I think he might have refused the order; but this was just the sort of mission that appealed to Tweedsmuir’s unregenerate romanticism. It was the kind of do-or-die challenge he could not resist.

Fatalistic with fatigue, we plodded off into a new maze of rocky peaks and sodden valleys. And I was again the ap-pointed navigator. Possibly Tweedsmuir was giving me a chance to redeem myself. Possibly he simply had not paused to weigh the consequences.

Through the next forty-eight hours we wandered in the wilderness. Most of the time I knew roughly where we were, but it proved virtually impossible to go where we wanted to go. We were forever being circumvented by stretches of impassable terrain. We found no enemy to fight—only mountains to climb and new downpours to shudder under. Food was a dream, and so was sleep. All links to the rear were broken and Brigadier Graham was again left to bite his nails and wonder if he had lost us forever.

There were a few brighter moments. One came when we stumbled on a stone hut in this otherwise empty world and the old goatherd who lived there in splendid isolation freely gave dippers of milk and the last bits of his scanty supply of bread to the famished soldiers who straggled past. Then there was an encounter with an Italian doctor in flight from the Germans and unaccountably leading a troop of mules. Not only did he treat our injured, he also volunteered his scraggly beasts to carry our heavy weapons.

At dawn on October 6, when we were finally within striking distance of Celenza and separated from it only by Mount Miano, a high ridge ten miles long, Tweedsmuir sent out a fighting patrol which brought back the unwelcome news that the ridge appeared to be heavily defended. Nothing daunted, Tweedsmuir doggedly determined to outflank Mount Miano.

We tried—but we had not gone far when an impenetrable fog descended on us and, not to mince matters, I got lost again and led the bone-weary troops a considerable distance in the wrong direction. As night fell, I discovered my error but was afraid to tell anyone except the commanding officer, for fear of being drawn and quartered on the spot. Tweedsmuir was remarkably forbearing. He looked at me sadly and remarked: “I say, Squib, rather a poor show, don’t you know.”

It was a mild rebuke but in my dishevelled and exhausted state of mind it rankled more than a thorough bawling-out. All through that wet and dreadful night I brooded until by dawn I was in the grip of an irrational compulsion to re-deem myself.

Tweedsmuir was dozing and shivering in the meagre shelter of an abandoned goat pen when I approached him with the proposal that I lead a mule-mounted patrol consisting of myself, three of my scouts and the doctor to act as muleteer, and reconnoitre a route straight across the crest of Mount Miano. He concurred in this hare-brained scheme with such alacrity that I concluded he would have agreed to almost anything if only it meant ridding himself of my presence.

My resolution hardened. This time, by God, it was
going
to be do or die! Which is how it came to pass that the 1st Squadron of Mowat’s Mounted Mules ambled off into the grey drizzle—not cautiously skulking under cover, but heading brazenly out into the open across a flat plateau directly toward the lowering bulk of Mount Miano.

One of our little party was determined to accomplish a memorable deed, or perish in the attempt, but it was
not
George Langstaff, my premier scout. Goading his mule into a trot, he hauled up alongside me, his craggy face creased with anxious lines.

“What the hell! You want every Jerry on that mountain to see us coming?”

I fixed him with my steeliest eye.

“Yes,
Private
Langstaff, that’s exactly what I want. And they’ll think we’re nothing but a bunch of Eyetie farmers and pay no attention. See?”

He looked at me with what I took to be awe-struck admiration, until he said: “Holy shit, Junior! You’ve blown your stack!”

With which, and a fatalistic shrug, he fell back into line and we plodded damply on.

Don Quixote would have been proud of us.
I
was proud of us when at last we reached the foot of the wooded slopes of the ridge without having drawn a single shot. Shrouded by mist and drizzle, we had successfully managed to masquerade as a party of civilians. Tensely we made our way upward through the dripping trees until at last we heard vehicles grumbling on a road which, the map had indicated, ran along the crest.

Leaving the doctor to keep the mules quiet, the rest of us inched slowly forward until we could see the road. For the moment it appeared to be deserted. Hurriedly we dragged a fallen tree trunk across it and I placed my two other scouts, Lyall Emigh and Keith Close, with two Brens to cover the approaches from both directions. Leaving Langstaff in charge, I raced down to the doctor and told him to take one of the mules and get back to the Regiment as fast as possible. I gave him a hastily scribbled note bearing this brave message:

“Have cut main Celenza road on Mount Miano. Will keep it cut until relieved.”

The departing clatter of the mule’s hooves was still in my ears when I heard the stutter of an approaching motorcycle on the road above. I pounded back up the slope expecting at every instant to hear the Brens open fire. Instead there came the squeal of tires braking hard, a challenge, a moment’s pregnant silence, and then a startled shout.

“Langstaff! You crazy old bugger! Where in hell’ve you bastards been? And why in hell are you pointing them goddamn gats at me?”

I would willingly drop the curtain at this point, but Truth is a hard mistress and will not be denied.

When I stumbled onto the road, it was to find my scouts sheepishly trying to explain themselves to one of our Headquarters Company dispatch riders. Bewildered, I joined them and in due course heard the details of what was for me a sorry tale.

Headquarters Company—the battalion supply and maintenance group—had been left behind with all its vehicles near Motta four days earlier. As time went on and there was no word of our whereabouts, the company set out to discover for itself what had happened to us. Meeting with no difficulties except some unguarded demolitions which were detoured, the column motored unconcernedly along until it reached Mount Miano.

The “enemy” reported by Tweedsmuir’s fighting patrol had in fact consisted of our own cooks, clerks, drivers and storemen, preparing bivouacs against the day when the battalion would see fit to emerge from its travail in wilderness.

I believe I had reason to feel the fates had done me in the eye. Yet later in the day when I tried to elicit some sympathy from Paddy Ryan, he was unresponsive.

“You were goddamn lucky, Squib. If you’d stayed with us
we’d
have killed you. And if there’d been Jerries on Miano
they’d
have killed you. You should count your blessings...”

PERHAPS GOADED BY the jibes of the Headquarters Company men, Lyall Emigh and Keith Close determined to redeem the I-section’s honour. A day after our ill-starred arrival on Mount Miano, they saw an opportunity to do so.

The Germans were then believed to be holding the line of the Fortore River about five miles west of Celenza. Anticipating that we might have to make an attack across this river, I sent Close and Emigh off to look for crossing places.

The river level was low and no Germans appeared to be around, so the two young men waded to the other side, then cautiously climbed to the hill town of Macchia, which turned out to be free of Germans too. Here they were greeted as liberators by the populace, and fêted and vinoed to such an extent that they decided to have a little more of the same by advancing to the next town and liberating it as well.

“It wasn’t only fun and games we was after,” Close later explained to me. “
Somebody
had to put the I-section back on the map, and, begging your pardon, sir, it looked like it was up to us. We figured if we could find a hole in the Jerry line, the Div could bust right through and we’d all come out covered with roses...”

However, as they approached a final hill before the village of St. Elia, they beheld a khaki-clad figure waving at them from the far edge of a field of grain. It seemed they had been forestalled. They walked toward the stranger to pass the time of day and learn if there were any more unliberated towns around. It was not until they were only a hundred yards apart that Close began to have doubts.

“Lyall,” he said sharply, “does that guy’s uniform look queer to you?”

“Jesus, yes! Maybe we should start shooting!”

They dropped to their bellies but had no time to aim or fire before “what sounded like a million Spandaus opened up on us, trimming the grain right over our heads as good as any mowing machine!”

“What in hell do we do now?” Close muttered plaintively as he embraced the hard earth.

“Hold up your map case... high! And wave the jeezly thing like it had wings!”

The Germans ceased fire and the would-be liberators got warily to their feet to find they had become prisoners of war.

They did not go into captivity with dignity. They were dispatched to the rear, pushing and pulling at the outpost’s ration mule while the German guards convulsed themselves with merriment. The scouts’ patience had worn thin by the time they were bundled into a motorcycle sidecar. The burly driver was armed with a rifle slung across his shoulders and a pistol at his belt, while the guard, riding pillion, carried a machine carbine cradled in his lap. Occasionally he shoved the muzzle into Close’s ribs and grinned.

Seething with a mixture of rage at the Germans and disgust with themselves, the scouts could endure no more. As one, they suddenly jumped their captors and all four men fell in a tangle on the road.

As the driver struggled to free his pistol, Close grabbed the muzzle of the slung rifle and pulled it down with such force that the butt flew between the driver’s legs with pile-driver force, leaving him with no further interest in the battle. Seizing the pistol, Close then clubbed the guard who was about to empty his carbine into Emigh.

An armoured half-track now rumbled into view, and the scouts fled over the crest of a nearby hill, pursued by angry shouts and a fusillade of shots. Below them lay a valley with a small stream running down its centre. There was no time to scale the far slopes so the fugitives leapt into the stream, crouched low, and were scuttling along it when Close spotted a dark shadow under the bank. He yanked Emigh by the arm and the two men dived into the shelter of a cave.

It was no natural cave. The scouts were appalled to find themselves sharing a tiny, man-made cavern with several crates of startled chickens who looked as if they were about to protest the intrusion with a wild alarum. Neither man dared move a muscle.

Three times they saw German jackboots stomp past the entrance, and each time their eyes swivelled, horror-stricken, toward the restless but, mercifully, still-silent birds.

Dusk came. Again the scouts heard footsteps, then a hairy face thrust itself into view. It belonged to an aged farmer who had contrived this sanctuary in which to keep his precious flock of hens safe from the
Tedeschi.
This evening when he came to feed them, he found himself the prisoner of two wild-eyed Canadians.

At first Emigh and Close did not know what to do with him. They did not trust him to serve as their guide back to the Fortore, and for the same reason dared not let him go free. Finally Emigh came up with a solution. He ordered the old man to make his own way to our lines and to bring back a well-armed Canadian patrol. If he failed to do so or betrayed the two men to the Germans, he was warned, his precious flock would be massacred to the last hen. In the face of this horrendous threat, the old fellow went forlornly off into the night to do his best.

Astonishingly he managed to cross the lines and find a Canadian unit to whom he told his story; but the soldiers did not believe it. Disconsolate and fearing the worst, the old man returned to the cave to report his failure. It was already past midnight and Close and Emigh were desperate enough by then to risk using him as a guide. In what must have seemed to him like a nightmare that would never end, the old man once again made his way through the German outposts to the Canadian unit which had rejected him before.

When Close and Emigh returned next morning, they brought him along. Before he was turned loose to go home to his
casa
and his chickens, we so loaded him with bully beef, cigarettes and chocolate that he could hardly stagger.

As for Close and Emigh—for some time afterwards all one had to do to send either of them into a state of shock was to sneak up in an unguarded moment and cackle like a star-tled hen.